With the demise of large trees for logging, the handling and processing of small logs or tree stems has become a major focus of the logging industry. One of the developments that emerged was the simultaneous processing of a plurality of such small tree stems. In a typical operation, a "bundle" of small tree stems, e.g. ranging from three inches in diameter to about eight inches in diameter, is picked up by a grapple and fed into the inlet of a debarker. The debarker unit is provided with a feed roll that is intended to rearrange the logs to a side-by-side arrangement for exposure to overhead and underneath flailing members.
Heretofore the feed roll was substantially cylindrical in configuration. Gravity action coupled with the rolling or feeding action was relied on to spread the bundled logs on the feed roll. However, such spreading of the small logs has not been consistently achieved. Obviously logs that pass through the debarker in a stacked arrangement will not be fully exposed to the flails and an entire side of log will still have the bark on it upon exiting the unit. Furthermore, the stacked logs have a much greater likelihood of jamming the unit. Accordingly there has been a need for improved log spreading means such as that provided by the present improved feed roll.